Until I got married, which was only a few years ago, I threw away every census form I ever received. I answered the last census because my wife made me. “You have to fill it out,” she said. “If you don’t, they just come to your house.”

“No, they don’t come to your house,” I said. “Not if you never fill one out in your whole life. You never fill one out, they don’t know where to look.”

I won’t buy lottery tickets, but I will bet with a bookie. If I needed a gun, I’d buy one in a bar. From a junkie. You have to use that kind of gun; you can just throw it away after. I’ve borrowed money from guys who were not loan officers. You couldn’t pay those guys back with a check, either.

These things are wrong, cardinal sins in our worship of the state, where, before you do anything else, you have to “register” or “fill out” a form or “get a license.”

Marriage will beat that stuff out of you pretty quickly, though I manage to fire a salvo for chaos now and then, even with a ring on my finger.

I refuse to join or contribute to a political party. I’m Catholic, but I won’t join a parish. You know those little plastic cards you carry on your key ring, the ones you use to get “discounts” at the grocery store and the drug store? I’ve got ‘em, but when I filled out the forms to get ‘em, I wrote down the wrong address and the wrong phone number.

My wife made me get a debit card, but I won’t use it, if only because I don’t want my bank knowing how much I drink. Anyway, I don’t care how cool you think you are, dropping your debit card on the bar will never be as cool as throwing down a 50.

But I got a mortgage, and I’ve got the Internet, and I’ve become much more findable than I was in the days when I worked for people who paid me in straight cash.

And you’d think, because this column often has a “liberal” bent, that I would want a bigger state; you’d think I’d want to be found and counted and kept safe.

But I’m not that kind of liberal. My brand of liberalism comes from the belief that you strike for decent wages, and when you strike, you bust heads. My brand of liberalism is untidy, sky-big compassion mixed with the damn-it-all “whoop” of a payday night drunk. A bum on the street can get a buck out of my pocket. A big, sanitary national charity can’t because their mush-mouthed board of directors aren’t my kind of people.

I’ve got friends who’ve never joined anything, but they’ve left cyber-tracks all over 1,000 porn and fantasy football sites. I know people begging for the mall to let them sign up for discount coupons mailed to their house. I know people who hate “big government,” but they cut traceable checks to candidates, to tea party groups and the NAACP

Facebook? The government is gonna look at Facebook? You ever see the stuff people put on there? The last time they had sex. How much they hate their senator or their president. The problems they’re having with that lazy, child-support-dodging bum they married by mistake. The sex of their upcoming child.

I’ve written in this column that the most American answer to any question is, “None of your damn business.”

But everybody’s a Kardashian now, living their own reality show, and everyone signs up for anything they think will get them a dime discount on a can of soup.

The guys in the suits promised us free stuff if we’d just fill out the forms, and the television told us we’d never miss a show if we let it record our preferences, and the Internet gave us cookies every time we watched porn, and we never said anything other than “burp.”

Start ducking ‘em. Give the wrong answer on the form. Lie. Throw the form away when they’re not looking. Loaf when the boss goes to lunch. Punch someone else’s time card for him so the supervisor won’t know he came in late.

You say when the government comes for your guns you’ll be ready with 30,000 rounds and a year’s supply of freeze-dried food.